I'm not familiar with Caprice's current board members but I will...

I'm not familiar with Caprice's current board members but I will take note of the words of caution by several here. I should have done more digging myself on the board: from memory I looked at their shareholdings in Caprice but not their form.

I did do what I consider reasonable checking of the CEO, Luke Cox. FWIW LC's background seems solid to me, coming off a three year gig from IPOing an ASX listed Canadian lithium exploring junior towards development. It seems that given that company's wish to move into development and its decision to relocate the executive team to Canada LC called it a day, seemingly on good terms with the company. He officially left that role in July last year and walked straight into the job at Caprice at the start of September. I think I've listened to all of LC's presentations now and my take of him is that he says it as he sees it. Of course he dresses up his story-line a bit - that is what company reps are supposed to do - but the story-line seems to have been pretty consistent in all of his interviews and presentations I've listened to.

LC has commented that he was brought into Caprice to focus on the West Arunta properties that Caprice has. I know bugger all about what is going on up there but apparently Caprice has strong nearology to a flash discovery by an ASX listed firm: WA1 Resources (WA1). I think from memory he said that first day in the job he went up to the West Arunta and the second day he managed to sign a native title agreement there. So it does seem that the primary focus of Caprice was up there, not down in the Murchison. However LC explained that as they were moving into the wet season and as the gold price was going gangbusters he thought he'd go kick a few rocks down south, at the company's gold prospect at the Island prospect. He was able to get onto a rig from Top Drill to put in 10 holes just before Christmas. However even with a couple of banger hits from one of the holes, back in February and March LC seemed focused on early money by ripping out a make-do MRE for the existing pit, at New Orient, which is in the northern portion of their block. In his latest talks, though, it seems that that idea may have taken a back seat to pushing on with drilling another 5km of holes into the guts of the existing tenements (whether that was because the New Orient MRE number was looking underwhelming or the Island assays were better than expected I do not know).

The point I make is that with both the New Orient pit and the Island drilling campaign LC has always talked of looking at how to monetise what they have there. What I've taken away from LC's comments over the last couple of months is that the company sees their future lying in the West Arunta not in the Murchison and they are looking to see if they can use the Island project to fund their ambitions up north. From what LC has said there seems zilch expectation that Caprice will develop a standalone mining operation at the Island project, rather maybe they do some toll treating of New Orient ore or, if they get lucky, maybe Ramelius sees enough potential at Island to buy it off them. In some sense, the drilling that Ramelius is apparently doing now on the southern boundary of the Island tenement, on their Cue property, could be just as important to the fate of Caprice as the drilling that Caprice itself is doing.

Sorry if I'm sounding a bit gushy about Luke Cox. Truth is I hadn't heard of the bloke until mid February. And I trust him about as much as I trust any mining boss: buyer beware. But much of the talk on the hc Caprice threads has been about its board's motivations and actions whereas I've been guided more by what the CEO has been telling the market. Just looking at things from a different angle: maybe add the two together.